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Some of these games seem to be in Nintendo's power to put out. I question the Big N's decision, for example, to put out Zoda's Revenge, but not the original Star Tropics, which is a much more nostalgic game. Faxanadu was published by Nintendo, although perhaps they no longer have the rights to it.

Regarding other publishers, I don't think that they expect to make more money repackaging these games in other fashions so much as they don't want to spend the resources to get them to work for VC, just as you suggest with Darkwing Duck, a show whose audience has all grown up. Capcom's Destiny of an Emperor, while a phenomenal game, is a niche title in the West, and while we did see SNES Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV on the VC, that game is a jump up in complexity from III, so I'm guessing it was to satisfy the console grognards out there. I did manage to get an official Konami compilation of Castlevania 1-3 and Contra/Super C for PC several years back, and with a gamepad, the games play just like the originals (except with the cool added feature of being able to save anywhere, anytime).

Finally, considering the obscurity of some of the titles that have come out for VC, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that any title on my list might come out. But I am sure that there is a group at Nintendo that decides which titles come out, and this group may be biased in their leaning toward particular genres and their own familiarity with titles. We can't be surprised that a lot of Nintendo-published titles are released, but if any of Nintendo's debating group have not played any of these titles, how can they decide whether they are of the caliber to re-release them? Plus, with the departure of Nintendo Power's staff from the primary HQ, this one previously in-house resource that they had is probably much harder to draw upon now.

I think it's great that a site like vc-reviews.com exists, however, to shed light on titles that are or may come out for the Wii VC. Likewise, fan efforts across the web to archive info on older games (e.g. MobyGames) are highly valued. If a deal could be made between video game companies and public libraries to keep the titles alive in some legal format, it would keep some titles from sinking into permanent obscurity just because they were never popular with a large-enough audience. Right now, the library of VC titles, Xbox Live Arcade and Sony's venue, whatever that is called, are the best legal efforts that I have seen to do that, albeit fledgling efforts. The other concern about game longevity is down the road when the Wii and the Xbox 360 become obsolete and no longer supported by their companies, just as the NES/SNES/N64 are no longer supported by Nintendo except for in a most rudimentary manner (e.g. repairs are no longer available), and Microsoft no longer supports Windows 98. We run into the same issue all over again.

While I have snagged some great games from yesteryear (e.g. Legend of Kage and Kid Icarus to name a couple of my earliest acquisitions) through Virtual Console, some of my favorites from the NES era have not been and, given the usual 7-year life-cycle of systems, will never see the light of day on the VC. When I originally parted with my NES, I made a list entitled "HappyNES" of the top 60 games from the system, so if you see any of these show up on VC, there is something good about them, but for those older gamers among you who have played a lot of these in yesteryear, you know what I'm talking about when there likely isn't much hope of seeing many of these niche titles ported.